Chapter 30 - Protests

                                    

                                          
I made my way towards the raised voices across the plaza. Southpoint Square was massive and dense, but through the ruckus pulling people to the incident I had only made worse, I finally made it to the other side. It became easier to move as I left and navigated my way away from the square and towards what become increasingly clear was shouting. It was much farther away than I'd expected. Protesters were gathered in a long, narrow street with banners and signs fixed to broomsticks and staffs and held high over their heads.
NO MORE WAR one said. Another, SENVIA IS DONE. A third had no words, but it hosted the same design as many of the protesters had painted onto their face, a yellow diamond with red paint crossing it out. The yellow gem was the Senvian Empire's symbol for the Path of the Warrior, the fourth direction of Pathoticism. According to the empire, the only true way for warriors to follow. Die on the battlefield, die in glory, die in honour, and only then would we ascend and greet the warrior kings of ages past. Elephius, Karn, Olega. All of them. And above them all, Torin. The heroes ascended in their battles. Living forever in enlightenment, above our worldly concerns. That is the truth of the world. To suffer now was the mission, and it was not suffering at all, but a life well lived and filled with a glory of purpose. All worth it to live among and call yourself equal to the men made gods from their flesh.
These protesters were making the same mistake that I had when Eskir had dragged me into the Athenaeum. This was the zenith star, disrespected and branded false by heretics.
And finally, the nail in the coffin confirmed it. The largest banner of all took ten people to carry it, and they carried it above all the rest. It was massively long, like the body of a wurm coiling its way through the earth. Hoisted well above the crowd and seated in the between the upper windows that bordered the street's skyline floated the words, FOR PEACE.
I pressed myself against the stucco siding of a residential home. None of them would recognise me, but I was the very face of what they wanted to tear apart.
The red wastes flashed before my eyes again.
Maybe it was time for some sort of a change.
What good had war ever really done?
Could the zenith path really justify that level of death and devastation?
I couldn't exactly ignore the For Peace movement's track record though. Too many acts of terror. The incident in the sky district in Perch Akna. The attack on the commerce guilds in Eaden Helm. The disruptive protests in Senvia, refusing to let people sleep day and night. Even the hijacking of the Attila I'd heard through grapevine. All of it, the worst ways to go about change. I had no problems believing that For Peace was involved somehow with Senvia's disappearance.
In any case, I had to find some sort of a market. At least a storefront that sold produce. I let myself be swept off into the march of protesters, a group all but invisible to the crowd at Southpoint Square that I had just left. I wonder what they thought of it all? Bell Haven was practically the centre of the movement. Even Lyana didn't know where it had begun, but Bell Haven had become its home and heart.
The protest moved through a five-way intersection, then turned on the spot and headed off east. It was a turn made with purpose, clearly planned ahead. Wherever they were going, they had a direction. The buildings moved away from the residential and shifted towards the industrial. A bridge interrupted the road in its predictable cadence of orchestrated three to five-storey buildings. It barely looked different from the road itself, only that the buildings gave way to a shaded local aqueduct flowing from the north at the ground level. Most of the aqueducts in this city ran through underground pipes, but the city had been built around its river flow.
Finally, I spotted a store. It was nearly hidden under a jeweler's shop, with only a broken-down sign pointing to its existence. A steep, narrow staircase brought me to its entrance, the doors barely a step away from the last stair. If the doors had swung outward, they wouldn't have been able to open at all.
It was a small store, marketed to a very specific demographic. I couldn't remember which one, but I knew they lived on a small chain of islands off the southern east coast, too small to even appear on a map. Most of the store was filled with bizarre cheeses and fruits I had never seen before.
"Yesa?" A young woman called out. She'd been half buried under a massive crate of waxed Durnian bananas.
"I'm looking for some supplies," I said, reaching through the shelving to hand her a copy of my list. "How much of this do you have?"
She looked it over with a concentrated half-frown. "Alo, eeh, no little. We have four. Missing rest."
"Can you prepare the right quantities? I can come back later to pick it up." I didn't want to carry produce from store to store.
"First pay," she snapped politely, hopping down from a stool I hadn't realised she'd been standing on. She was much shorter than I had expected, and her face gleamed like raindrops in the store lighting.
I nodded and reached for my coins.
My coin purse was gone. I felt for it again, this time more frantically.
"No pay, no food."
I stepped out of the store in a panic, looking from one end of the protesting line to the other. Who could have stolen it? A pickpocket got the better of me? How was that possible? I went through the interactions I'd had over the last few minutes, brief passings by at the shoulder. Most of them barely touched me. I should have felt it, I should I known. How could I not?
My fingers fell into the pocket where I'd dropped the Archivist's coin. To my relief, my fingers felt the ring it had formed itself into. At the very least, I could get back in. But save for a few spare coins I always kept tucked under the sole of my left boot, that purse held everything I had. Even the coin I'd gotten from Ana before I left the tavern.
"Why?" I sighed. "Just. Why? I'd like to have one day without any issues. One day. Is that really so much to ask for?"
"Yes," came a voice from behind me.
Sometimes, a single word can hit with the weight of the world. When it is said at the right moment, in the right circumstances, or with the right voice, it can mean everything. The 'yes' was meaningless, said with an aloof sarcasm. But the voice behind it hit me like the smell of fresh bilberries and salty air. It felt like home. Without fully realising it, my distressed expression faded and my lips curled into an unwilling grin. I turned on the spot to greet the newcomer.
"Jenny!"
She looked better than when we'd parted ways, moments after coming out of the Hunak. She'd gone from ragged, worn-out travel clothes to something that made her look like she was on the warpath. A light hint of red now adorned her face in two thing straight lines like tattoos, following from the tips of her forehead above her temples and meeting the outer edges of her eyes. Across the lower half of her body, she wore an ankle-grazing earthy green travel dress, split on the sides for movement and flexibility, and thin stretch brown leggings underneath. Above was a loose-fitting white tunic and a brown boiled wool jacket, with a yellow shawl that moved almost unnaturally. It wasn't the only thing she wore that looked out of place, either. A necklace was looped several times around her wrist like a bracelet with a dangling cooling charm. A wedding ring hung from another necklace around her neck. On top of it all, a wide-brimmed olive green hat.
She was dressed for the impending summer.
"Forget it," she said, staring down at my waist. "It's long gone. Those people don't stick around."
"What?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"You were pickpocketed, right?" Her tone turned into a babying sarcasm. "You poor thing, probably don't even know when it happened."
Her eyes had distracted me. Her voice thrown me off. The colour of a morning coffee lit up by the sunlight and the sound of a hearth.
"Hey," she snapped her fingers in my face. "Are you listening?"